


Coincidence is an excuse for those who don't know where they're going

by Etwas_Schlau



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Military, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Romance, Chance Meetings, Coincidences, F/F, First Meetings, Military, Mutual Pining, POV Third Person Limited, Present Tense, Two Shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-02-18 07:37:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13095450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etwas_Schlau/pseuds/Etwas_Schlau
Summary: A (hopefully) thee part tale about Sergeant Aleksandra Zaryanova and Doctor Angela Ziegler, two very different soldiers leading two very different lives and the ties that bind them through time, mistake, and consequence.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Note:** I do not own Overwatch. All rights to the game and its characters belong to Blizzard.
> 
> i really would like to write some other pairing in this fandom but i have no inspiration and i feel like zarya and mercy are the only two characters i can even remotely characterize. this is somewhere between a present-day military au and a non-overwatch future fic but i'm not quite sure and don't plan on finding out.

Angela downs the last of her bourbon with a tilt of her head, placing the empty glass down with a clink. As if answering a siren’s call, the barkeep, a rugged-looking man wearing his trademark cowboy hat and ubiquitous grin, sidles over from behind the bar.

“Can I get’cha another, Angie?” he says, as charmingly persuasive as ever. 

“I shouldn’t…” she mutters, eyes drifting as her tumultuous thoughts remind her of everything she has to do tomorrow. “ _Scheiße_ , why not?”

McCree’s smile widens as he retrieves the bottle of liquor, refilling Angela’s glass. His expressions sombers, however, as he leans down so the hushed words he utters won’t be overheard.

“You alright, darlin’?”

Mercy scoffs at the pet name and waves a hand dismissively as she nurses her second drink of the night. “I’m fine, Jesse. Honestly, you shouldn’t worry about me.”

“You been lookin’ like a right stormcloud since you came in. What’s on your mind?” he persists anyway, settling onto a stool behind the bar so they’re at a more level height for conversation. Angela smiles wryly to herself; that man had always been persistent, hadn’t he?

“Oh, you know. The usual scene.” She had meant for her words to sound nonchalant, but as they echo in her ears all she hears is dejection, exhaustion.

McCree’s warm, russet eyes soften in understanding. “My condolences. When you shippin’ out?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Cuttin’ it close, are we?”

“If this is the only taste of civilian life I’m going to get for a year then I’d better enjoy it,” she retorts sourly into her glass.

“Only taste of good ol’ booze, you mean,” he quips, a light smirk playing about his lips. 

A tired smile curls at the corner of Angela’s mouth and Jesse reciprocates, baring his teeth in satisfaction. “You know what you need to do is-”

“For the last time, Jesse, I’m not having a one night stand with some guy you know,” Angela interrupts, exasperated.

“Gettin’ laid would do you good! Help ya’ relax a little. I know a few women too, I know you’re more into the ladies.”

Angela’s cheeks almost redden at the wink McCree throws her way, yet she scoffs nonetheless. ”I’ve been in the army for almost a decade, I’ll be fine.”

“I’m telling ya’, all that stress is gonna be the death of you. What could be a better send off than one frenzied night with someone you ain’t ever gon’ have to see again?”

She shakes her head good-naturedly as she drinks a long pull from her bourbon. “I’m not you, Jesse.” The bartender responds with an unabashed grin as she goes on. “We all deal with stress in different ways.”

“An’ your way is totally ignorin’ it?”

Before Angela can say something snide in response, a group of rowdy, obviously buzzed men suddenly stumble their way into the bar, prompting McCree to stand. “Sorry, darlin’, looks like I have customers to serve. And I might be checkin’ out the local wildlife while I’m at it…” he adds as he casts bedroom eyes towards one of the men amongst the crowd.

She rolls her eyes with a playful expression. “Go do your job.”

“Yes ma’am.” With a tip of his hat, he moves to greet the new patrons and Angela heaves a leaden sigh into her glass. 

A tired flutter of anxiety niggles at the back of her mind; it’s late and she knows it. She should be asleep at home, she can’t be hungover when she returns to work. Her profession requires a steady hand a clear mind, and every mouthful of sharp liquor that burns past her tongue will only worsen her already destitute spirit when she wakes with a migraine like an icepick in her skull-

Angela is jolted from her pensive brooding as someone abruptly settles onto the stool beside her. The stranger’s frame is so massive that her bicep almost brushes against Mercy’s shoulder as she leans forward onto the bar, waving over a barmaid. 

“A beer,” she announces much louder than necessary, grinning pleasantly as she surveys the others in the club. 

Mercy’s eyes inquisitively flicker to the athletic woman beside her. Unlike most of the regulars throughout the pub, Angela doesn’t recognize her; all hard muscle, emerald eyes, and rose-coloured hair. She’s young and buoyant with restless enthusiasm carved into her bright expression, shining like the sun in summer as she receives her drink. If it weren’t for the polite, composed ‘thank you’ she offers the bartender in return, Angela would assume she were already intoxicated from the punch-drunk smile on her face.

Mercy finishes her drink and McCree, having momentarily side-stepped away from the unruly throng of drunk men, knows her well enough to supply her with another before she places her now-empty glass back down. 

“Another bourbon for the lady,” he says before he disappears back into the commotion.

She hasn’t touched the new drink yet when a thickly-accented voice quips from beside her, “Bourbon? An interesting choice.” 

Angela offers a droll smile in return. “Bourbon, on average, has about ten times the alcohol content of beer.”

“You are not wrong, but such strong liquor tastes like the bottom of a boot.”

“If that’s so, then beer must not be far from toilet water.”

The woman laughs, loud and boisterous, clapping a calloused hand on Angela’s back. “I like you, what is your name?”

“Angela, but most know me as Mercy.”

“Mercy? An odd name, we’ve just met and yet I don’t believe you have a shred of it in you.”

“Don’t believe all your assumptions.” Angela pauses to obscure her face in her drink. Swallowing, she continues. “You never told me your name.”

“I am Aleksandra. My friends call me Zarya.”

“It is nice to meet you, Zarya.”

“And you, Angela.” 

Mercy quirks a golden brow at Zarya’s choice to refer to her by her name rather than her given callsign, but says nothing. Her gaze wanders to one of the many televisions replaying classic sports games, willfully ignoring the budding conversation she is tacitly obligated to continue. As intriguing as Aleks is, Angela doesn’t want to make friends here. She already knows McCree and doesn’t have room in her life for any more civilian friends whom she may never see again; all they will do is add extra weight to her already overloaded shoulders.

Zarya seems to have other ideas, however. “So, what do you do?”

“I am a doctor.”

“Ah, you are very fortunate.” Aleksandra’s eyes wander and her voice suddenly seems a bit thicker, somehow softer. “I sometimes imagine how different my life might be if I had such luck.”

Angela tilts her head. “What do you mean?”

She seems to come to her senses all at once, shaking her head and replacing her exuberant grin. “ _Nichego_ , just, my life is very different from yours. I am a soldier of the Russian Defense Forces.”

Angela smirks internally; part of her wants to smugly prove Zarya wrong by mentioning her status as an esteemed combat medic, however, a much greater part desperately wants to pretend for just a second that she lives a normal noncombatant life. She considers McCree’s repeated advice of spending one meaningless night with someone she would likely never see again; except rather than having casual sex, donning an innocent civvie facade for a few moments of her hectic life.

“Is that so? How wonderful to have such chance to serve your country,” she says, all the while thinking of her own military career being everything but. “How long have you been in the forces?”

“Almost eleven years, now.”

Angela’s eyebrows shoot to her hairline. “Eleven years? You look so young.”

Zarya chuckles, eyes crinkling with mirth. “Please, I am not much younger than you.”

“I am thirty-seven,” Mercy says, grinning into her bourbon at the shocked expression that overtakes Aleksandra’s face.

“You hardly look thirty!”

“I’ve heard that many times before, _Junge_. But back to you, soldier. What made you choose to enlist?”

“Truthfully, I did not have the most decision in the matter. My home village was attacked right after I turned eighteen.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It is fine. Old wounds, no?” Zarya says with a passive huff, taking a generous swig from her beer. “But I am very good at what I do. I have just recently achieved the rank of sergeant.”

“Congratulations! What it is like?” Angela scarcely refrains from barking out a bitter laugh at the absurdity of her question, considering her own colourful military history.

“I will not lie, it is not as glorious as many like to fantasize. When I was a child, old soldiers from my village would speak of war as if it were a righteous affair, but the reality is much more… bleak. I have watched many good men die.”

Angela bites back another apology, knowing from her own experience that pity is the last thing a war-worn veteran wants, much less a misplaced monologue about their bravery. She remembers the countless times civilians have profusely venerated her for her service, idolizing her when all she wanted was to be seen as the same as them, so she offers some solitary comfort by placing a mitigating hand on Zarya’s broad shoulder.

Aleksandra smiles, yet the crows-feet from before don’t grace her face. Her shamrock-hued eyes are warm and grateful, however, and when Angela cannot face them anymore, she returns attention to her drink, finishing the liquor with one final swallow. 

“I really must go,” she breathes, standing from the leather barstool. “I have work tomorrow.” As the words slip from her mouth she rationalizes the untruth by telling herself that she really _does_ have to return to her career in the morning, though guilt still weighs in the pit of her stomach.

Zarya rises from her seat, raising a tentative hand as she speaks, “Wait. Can I- can I see you again?” Her expression is desperate and hopeful, and Angela’s fatigued heart squeezes in her chest.

“Aleksandra, you and I both know there is no room in warfare for extraneous companionship.”

Zarya hangs her head in what Angela believes to be pensive agreement, withdrawing her extended arm. “You are right. I- It was good meeting you, Angela.” Her words are somber and almost longing, but she smiles sadly as she lifts her viridian gaze to Mercy’s.

“And you as well, Zarya. But one last thing,” she draws close to Aleks with an impish smirk that betrays the stinging isolation in her chest, “my name is Mercy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~i could easily make this a one shot but i love attention~~
> 
> Translations:
> 
> scheiße - shit  
> nichego - nothing  
> junge - boy (but in this context, young one)
> 
> shitpost with me at comrade-schlau.tumblr.com


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2018 is the year of killing off epithets with rusty keyhole saws and yet,,  
> this is unedited and it's probably going to stay that way

She awakens slowly, as if she is encased is gelatin. She is swimming, floating on her back in a pool of something euphoric. Something opiate, she recognizes.

She feels vibration in her throat but doesn’t hear the noise it generates. She is blindly reaching out around her, which she only knows because she can feel the movement in her biceps. She is trying, desperately, to do something, but what? She can’t remember…

No! She feels her head shake as if she’s an observer to her own body. She can’t forget, there’s something important she has to do, has to remember…

She grunts fitfully and this time she can hear it. It’s there, it’s on the tip of her tongue, her tongue that is dry as sandpaper and plastered to the roof of her mouth. There’s something vital she is forgetting, something that her subconscious is screaming to address.

She remembers characteristic broad shoulders and bushy eyebrows and a thick accent so like her own, and she remembers a name. “Rez, ah, Reznikov,” she mumbles through her uncooperative tongue.

She cannot will her eyes to open. She’s thrashing back and forth like a sailboat in a thunderstorm, slurring incoherent syllables that sound like that name, the name of… someone. Who the hell is Reznikov, and why is their name on her lips?

“Hush now,” a familiar, yet foreign-sounding voice croons, and she can feel a hand that is _definitely_ not her own stroking sweat-soaked hair from her forehead. “You must rest.”

“Reznikov?”

“No, Aleksandra. He is fine,” the lilting voice pauses to gently push her half-upright body back onto the bed, “and you need rest.”  
  
Zarya can tell that the dosage of whatever drug is pumping through her veins has just been raised from the way her mind suddenly feels lighter and her limbs heavier. Before she can say another word, she’s slipping back into sleep.

* * *

Bitter Siberian wind claws at Aleksandra’s fur coat, though she does not shiver. Decades of living amongst subzero conditions, she thinks, insulate her flesh more than the four layers of clothing she is wearing. Muscle memory guides her feet through the terrain, though the dense snow on the ground is deep enough to engulf Zarya’s massive boots and experience can only speed the process so much.

Her thoughts are slow and grim. Over the howling of the wind and the crunch of ice beneath her feet, Zarya can hear the _rat-a-tat-tat_ of gunfire in the distance. One of her men is wheezing behind her, and the fact that she knows exactly why doesn’t ease her mind as it should.

“Sergeant Zaryanova, I can’t carry him anymore.”

“ _Blyad_ ,” she hisses, her shoulders knotting together. She halts her heavy steps, twisting around to eye the quivering soldier with the large, limp body in his arms.

“We cannot let him die. Someone else must carry him.”

“We’ve been taking turns as it is, Sergeant. He weighs over one hundred kilograms, we can’t do it anymore.”

Eying the others in the platoon and seeing sheepish nods of agreement, Aleksandra heaves a heavy breath through her teeth and drops her plasma cannon in the snow.

“Give him to me.” She doesn’t have to say it twice; her subordinate graciously lifts the unconscious soldier’s frame into her outstretched arms with his own hands shaking in fatigue. Holding the body is awkward, but after decades of training, Zarya can lift him with relative ease.

“Yakovlev, take my canon. We must go.”

She has hardly taken five steps when she hear the man’s voice. “Sergeant…”

“ _Chto_?”

“I can’t pick this up,” he strains. “It’s as heavy as he is.”

Zarya rolls her jaw, teeth clenched so tight that her molars ache. The clock is ticking for the man in her arms, the man who had been astonishingly lucky to emerge from his previous Omnic altercation with little more than a profusely bleeding head wound (rather than a missing limb or a bullet in his skull.) The man who had fallen unconscious over fifteen minutes ago, whose body temperature has since plummeted in the roaring blizzard.

The man who will be dead if he doesn’t get medical attention soon.

“Leave it.”

“Sergeant?”

“Leave it,” she says again, stomping forward through the thickening snow with her soldiers in tow.

“But-”

“I can fight with any weapon. Reznikov’s life is more important.”

Yakovlev quiets as the convoy continues through the storm. Every few minutes, Aleksandra removes her right glove to rest two fingers on her soldier’s neck. His pulse is weaker each time she checks, and a heavy ball of anxiety knots itself into her gut. By the time the roof of the remote medical base becomes visible in the distance, Reznikov’s heart is fluttering weakly like a butterfly’s wings and Zarya unconsciously quickens her pace.

Her footfalls come to an abrupt stop, however, as glinting metal catches her eye at the side of the building. It can’t be what she thinks it is, the universe wouldn’t be so cruel, would it? She stumbles closer to get a better look through the gales of falling snow so fierce they are almost horizontal, and her hopeful heart hardens to stone in her chest.

“What is it?” a cadet named Iliev says, joining her ahead of the others and squinting to see where she is looking.

“Give me your rifle.”

The soldier’s brows furrow in confusion but she complies anyway, sliding the pulse gun into Zarya’s waiting hands. Aleks bends down, gently resting Reznikov in the snow as she switches the weapon’s safety off. Eying the horde of Bastion units swarming the base’s entrance, she barks a series of frenzied commands into her earpiece before moving in.

From there, everything blurs. Heart pounding with fear and adrenaline, Aleksandra charges the Omnics from behind with her platoon at her sides. Combat instantly breaks out, and with the Bastion squad distracted, Iliev drags Reznikov behind the scene of the battle toward the medical base as she’d been instructed. Through the chaos of the skirmish, Zarya sees a terrified nurse pull the two marines inside the building and she desperately hopes they've made it in time to save her best soldier’s life.

The battle rages on in a haze, Zarya’s body moving faster than her mind. Yakovlev gets hit in the calf with a spray of bullets as he takes down one of the murderous robots and all she knows then is that she is enraged.

Fucking Omnics. As if it wasn’t enough they’d wrecked havoc throughout her childhood and young adulthood, here she is over a decade later, still struggling to keep those she cares about alive. Parasites, she thinks; they’re parasites. Relentless leeches feeding upon the years of her life they’ve stolen from her through war and destruction and death.

Mind clouded with fury, she doesn’t notice the Siege Automaton E54 Bastion a few meters away quickly converting to turret configuration. She doesn’t hear the mechanical gunfire until it is ripping into the flesh of her left side. Her fire is extinguished then, and she crumples to the ground with an anguished cry.

In that moment, pain is all she perceives; white hot like a dragon’s tongue snaking through her veins. She knows her injury is especially serious when she realizes that she doesn’t feel cold. Laying in the snow in the middle of a blizzard with half of her coat all but shredded by artillery fire, she should be freezing, yet she feels warm as if under a blanket.

Fumbling with an unsteady hand, she gingerly feels the bare skin around her wound where her clothes have been torn. Her glove comes back soaked with a deep crimson, and though shock is setting in, it makes sense to her. Of course she feels warm, she is coated in blood, hot and oozing from the mangled lacerations in her skin.

Her mind feels fuzzy and far away as she idly wonders if she’s going to die. Here, in the ice, with her troops fighting all around her and snowflakes melting on her face. Here, only meters from a medical base no doubt full of doctors who could help her. Here, in her homeland she had fought so tirelessly to protect from the very scourge who had taken her out in the end.

A pity, she muses. She had been looking forward to the war’s conclusion, to seeing the Russian landscape at peace. To meeting a woman, to settling down and having a family to love and be loved by. Oh, the stories she could have told her future children, tales of her valiant war achievements and folk stories that had been passed down her family lines for generations.

Regrets, she figures this is about the time people start thinking about their regrets. Surprisingly, after a moment of pondering, she finds she doesn’t have many. She wishes she had spent more time with her grandparents before the crisis; she had been eager to go out and explore and didn’t know then how soon they would be gone. She wishes she had gotten a chance to go through comprehensive military training rather than being thrust head first into battle when the war began; maybe then she would have learned to be more mindful and she wouldn’t now be dying in a puddle of blood in the snow due to her own carelessness. She wishes she had gotten the number of the ‘Angela’ woman she had met in that Amsterdam bar all those months ago; she knows they could have been something, could have made something together.

After some time passes, she doesn’t feel the pain anymore. All she feels is tired, the muted sounds of gunshots and her soldiers yelling frantically to one another coalescing into a macabre lullaby. She finally lets her head fall slack against the ground, and the last thing she sees before her eyes slide shut is the bleak grey Siberian sky.

* * *

The second time she awakens, things are clearer but still rough around the edges. She feels warm, and her left arm is numb as if she’d fallen asleep on it. As she shakes her hand in an attempt to a banish the pins-and-needles sensation, she notices an incessant beeping noise coming from across the room. Her face wrinkles in displeasure and she grunts tiredly.

“ _Chto eto za zvuk_?” she groans, shaking her head petulantly and finally managing to open her eyes.

Zarya glances around to see she’s in a hospital room, and she then recalls what had happened. She remembers the battle, getting shot by the Omnic, but she doesn’t remember what had come after. She has no memory of what had occurred between then and now, though she assumes from what she clearly identifies as stitches in her side that one of the doctors had patched her up.

When she closes her eyes and focuses she is able to bring a faint memory to the surface. Someone had spoken to her earlier, someone with an odd foreign accent, but what had they said? Something about Reznikov? She isn’t sure if that had actually happened or if her subconscious had manufactured it from her worry about him.

The machine is still beeping. It’s too fast to be a heart monitor and the volume is beginning to give her a migraine she can feel through the abundance of painkiller in her system.

“ _T'fu! Vyklyuchite yego_!”

The sound abruptly ceases after a moment, then,

“Still don’t believe I have any mercy?” that accented voice says.

Zarya’s eyes snap open to see woman with blonde hair messily tied in a bun and an impish smirk to boot leaning against the silenced medical machine.

She jerks upright, causing a flash of pain to shoot through her side. “Angela?” she breathes reverently, feeling as if she’s seen an angel.

“Be careful, you’ll disrupt the stitches,” she chides, and Aleks leans back down.

“What..? What are you doing here, this is a warzone!”

Angela laughs and Zarya suddenly remembers how much she missed her. “When we spoke I may have left out the fact that I am a travelling combat medic.”

“But you-”

“I told you not to believe all your assumptions, Aleksandra.”

Zarya quiets for a moment, then grins triumphantly. “You seem to remember much from our last meeting.”

“Of course I do. That night was the best time I’ve had in years.”

“And here we are, together again.”

“A stunning coincidence, is it not?”

“I have never believed in coincidence. Coincidence is an excuse for those who don’t know where they’re going.”

“How do you explain our meeting again, then?” There’s a twinkle in Angela’s eyes that makes Aleksandra feel higher than any drug.

A slow smile spreads across her face. “Destiny.”

“Is that so?”

“Fate brought us together once and we ignored it. Now it is giving us a second chance to do things correctly.”

“And what exactly is correct?”

Zarya’s eyes flicker down to Angela’s lips, then back to those striking, half-lidded blue eyes. “Whatever you want. You did save my life, after all.”

Angela crosses the small room in two strides, stepping into Aleksandra’s space. She is staring down at Zarya as if it is taking all her control to restrain herself. “It _would_ be rude to ignore destiny a second time, I suppose.”

“Very disrespectful,” she agrees.

“We wouldn’t want to disappoint, would we?” She’s leaning closer, practically perching on the hospital bed.

“Of course not.”

Her eyes are on on her lips this time and Zarya’s heart is in her throat. “Angela…”

She presses a finger to Aleks’ lips. “Call me Mercy.”

Their lips brush and it’s different than any previous kiss Aleksandra has had; it’s slow and warm and it feels as if a light bulb is flickering on in her chest. There is no urgency, no fervent spontaneous desire. Angela’s teeth are grazing her bottom lip, gentle and secure. Zarya reaches up with her numb arm to cup Mercy’s face, prompting a discordant sting of pain from the scar tissue on her side but it’s worth it.

Angela pulls away, breath heavy and pressing her forehead against Zarya’s. Somehow in this medical base in the middle of a war, she feels safe.

Aleksandra allows her hand to slip from Mercy’s neck but something suspends her arm above the bed. Angela exclaims quietly and recoils back. They both look down too see a few strands of blonde hair caught in one of the metal knuckle hinges of Aleks’ left hand, and Mercy quickly remedies the issue.

Wait.

Why is her hand made of metal?

Zarya stares, seeing her left arm for the first time since reawakening. At the base of her forearm, right beneath the elbow, Aleksandra’s skin meets shiny silver metal. Her previously fleshy forearm is made entirely of robotics.

A prosthetic.

She feels as if her world has just broken off its axis. The room is spinning and her heart is pounding and her mouth is suddenly dry.

“What did you do to me?” she spits, glaring up at Angela from beneath her dark, taut eyebrows.

“I thought you knew, I-” Her tone is somber and she pauses to swallow. “Your arm and part of your side were shredded by the gunfire. The damage was irreparable, I had to amputate the arm and repair you with cybernetics.”

Zarya’s gaze falls back down to the bionic limb. She tugs her hospital gown up over her torso to see a wide expanse of her left side merged with machinery. Examining the cables attaching skin to metal with horror, she breathes, “You made me into one of them…”

“What?”

“I’ve spent my entire life fighting those robot vermin, and you’ve turned me into one…”

“Aleksandra, it’s not like-”

“You’re right, it’s worse. I’m a half-breed now, an _otvratitel'nyy_ cyborg!”

“Aleks-”

“Get out.”

“Zarya, please.”

“Get. Out. I want a different doctor.”

“Don’t be like this-!”

“You have done enough.”

Crossing her cybernetic hand beneath her opposite arm, Zarya stares pointedly away from Mercy, fuming. A thick silence descends on the room, and after a few moments Angela turns around to leave. Only when the door shuts and the sound of footfalls recede completely, does Zarya curl in upon herself and cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> blyad - damn, bitch  
> chto - what  
> chto eto za zvuk - what is that sound  
> t'fu yklyuchite yego - ugh, turn it off  
> otvratitel'nyy - filthy, disgusting
> 
> if you're wondering whether or not the soldier's name is an oitnb reference: yes it is  
> apparently there's going to be 3 chapters instead of 2, see you in another month probably
> 
> catch me outside at comrade-schlau.tumblr.com


End file.
